The losses keep piling up for the White Sox, and a lot of them won’t stick in the memory next week, let alone next year.
But some are of the milestone variety, such as the 9-4 defeat Sunday against the Tigers before an announced crowd of 16,928 on a muggy afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The Sox fell to 31-100, giving them back-to-back seasons of 100 or more losses for the first time in club history. They’re the second-fastest to reach triple-digit losses in the modern era behind the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, who did it one game sooner at 29-100-1.
And they remained on pace to bump the 1962 Mets (40-120) out of the record book for the most losses in a season in the modern era. They’d finish 38-124 at their current rate.
The negative stats, like the losses, all tend to blur together after a while.
But there are still 31 games to play, and with wins so hard to come by, the Sox take positives where they can find them. Though the record under interim manager Grady Sizemore (3-11) doesn’t necessarily show it, there’s a sense of having made small steps forward.
“The last week and a half, two weeks have been better,” left fielder Andrew Benintendi said. “It seems like the game is not over in the seventh like it may have been earlier in the year. We have to keep fighting.”
This game started off well for the Sox. Benintendi and Andrew Vaughn smacked RBI doubles in the first, and Vaughn hit the team’s first home run in eight games — and his 15th of the season — in the third inning for a 3-1 lead.
But things unraveled for starter Jonathan Cannon (2-8) in the fifth. He allowed three hits and a walk before getting an out and was replaced by Fraser Ellard. The Tigers scored three times to go up 5-3 and led the rest of the way. Andy Ibanez, who didn’t start, drove in three runs for Detroit, including two with a homer off Enyel De Los Santos in the seventh inning.
The next milestone loss for the Sox could come before this 10-game homestand is over. That would be the one that breaks the club mark of 106 losses set in 1970.
There’s no dodging this year’s negative numbers, especially now that the Sox have become a national story.
“We’ve got a bunch of guys that come in here every day and work as hard as we can,” Cannon said. -“Obviously, no one wants to lose 100 games, especially with still a month to go.
“But we’re going to keep coming here every day, getting our work in and just keep going out there and trying to win some ballgames.”
And trying to show enough to be part of the Sox’ near- or long-term future.
“At this point, everybody is battling their own battle, me included,” Benintendi said. “Just showing up and trying to do your job the best you can is all you can do at this point. It’s easy to maybe give at-bats away and things like that. I’ve done that in the past.
“But it’s important to know that every at-bat matters.”
Even in a season that went off the rails months ago.